Items tagged with wireless

The hope that Google would eventually roll out its crazy fast fiber optic Internet service to virtually all corners of the continental United States was dashed on Monday when the company announced it was hitting the pause button on future expansion efforts. Google's sudden shift in strategy also means there will be some job losses in the coming days and weeks. What this all means to you depends on where you live. Google isn't completely abandoning its Fiber service. In the eight metro areas where Google Fiber already exists, the service will continue to be offered and supported. Google will also...Read more...

Google's making it easier to try out its potentially game changing Project Fi smartphone wireless service by now allowing you to sign up for a group plan. Previously the service was only available to individuals, which meant juggling multiple accounts if you wanted to get the whole family on board, but now you can have up to half a dozen people on a single plan. They don't have to be immediate family members, either. Heck, they don't even have to be related. Google is dropping any pretenses that people won't end up sharing a group plan with friends and co-workers, so feel free to add anyone you...Read more...

A team of smartypants from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Labl (CSAIL) have developed a new Wi-Fi system purportedly capable of transmitting wireless data more than three times faster than the Wi-Fi we use today. And on top of being significantly faster, it doubles the range of modern day Wi-Fi transmissions. The new system is call MegaMIMO 2.0 and it could eventually find its way into the Wi-Fi routers that consumers buy for home use. For that to happen, companies such as Netgear and Belkin/Linksys would have to adopt and implement the technology, though bigger benefits could...Read more...

Call it a first-world problem if you like, but the larger your home, the trickier it can be blanketing it in wireless connectivity. Dead zones have a nasty habit of popping up in remote corners separated by walls and doors, and that's one of the reasons why your choice in router matters. It's also the main selling point of Netgear's new Orbi Wi-Fi System. There's a lot of fancy marketing speak associated with Orbi but what it essentially boils down to is an easy-to-configure router and range extender (more on that in a moment), the latter of which Netgear calls a satellite. Like Google's OnHub...Read more...

A filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveals just how adamant Google is about building out a wireless version Fiber, its high-speed Internet service that offers up to 1Gbps upload and download speeds in select locations across the United States. The wireless transmission technology is already being tested in Kansas City, which is one of the locations where Fiber service is offered, and Google wants permission to expand.According to the redacted FCC filing, Google wants to use "experimental transmitters" in around two dozen locations, including several cities in California and...Read more...

Nothing beats wireless for convenience, but whenever you transmit important data through the air, there's a risk that someone could be nearby, ready to intercept the signals before they reach their destination. If this sounds familiar, it might be because we talked about this very thing earlier this year, when security firm Bastille ousted 'MouseJack', an overly-marketed vulnerability affecting wireless peripherals from major vendors, including Microsoft and Logitech. Well, Bastille is back, this time with 'KeySniffer', another vulnerability (or set of vulnerabilities) that has apparently also...Read more...

Bottle rockets and Black Cats won't be the only fireworks going off next week, apparently Verizon Wireless is planning to light things up in a big way, too. According to an image that was posted on reddit, Big Red is getting ready to introduce several new features, the biggest of which is the ability to roll unused data over to the next month.Verizon's calling that feature Carryover Data, which is exactly what it sounds like—Verizon will automatically roll unused data to the end of the following month. Assuming the screenshot is accurate (it was supposedly taken from Verizon's Testman site), the...Read more...

Today's wireless networks can handle applications like Snapchat, but what about the emergence of virtual reality? FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said his eyes were opened to the need for significantly faster wireless signals when he donned a pair of VR goggles in Washington, DC, and controlled an excavator to dig up dirt 1,400 miles away in Texas. "Granted, remotely digging dirt in Dallas probably isn't high on the list of transformational advancements that will define the 21st century. But what if you replace the heavy machinery with a scalpel so a world-class surgeon can move from hospital to hospital...Read more...

A second wave of 802.11ac wireless routers have begun to appear, and the new must-have feature is MU-MIMO, short for Multiple User, Multiple Input, Multiple Output. We already reviewed the first two MU-MIMO routers we could get our hands on from Linksys and Netgear, and now Asus has entered the fray with a dual-band AC3100 router dubbed the RT-AC88U. This is a flagship router that has all the bells and whistles one would expect at a $300 price point, but it differentiates itself from the competition by offering Link Aggregation and eight LAN ports, which are uncommon features in a consumer-class...Read more...

Brace yourself folks, a new version of Bluetooth is coming and it brings some significant changes to the wireless standard. Chief among them are faster data speeds that are twice what they are in the current version while extending the wireless range fourfold, Bluetooth Special Interest Group executive director Mark Powell revealed in an email sent to U.K. health and monitoring company Blue Maestro.In his email, Powell notes the next iteration will simply be called Bluetooth 5. The decision to drop references to version and point number was a conscious one by SIG members, which includes companies...Read more...

We're sure Amazon would love it if you purchased a new Kindle device each and every year, but if you're not the type that always needs to be on the bleeding edge of technology—and most mainstream buyers aren't—then you're probably perfectly content with your older Kindle gadget. And that's fine, just be sure to check for and apply the latest update by March 22 (tomorrow) or it will self-destruct! Just kidding, Kindles don't do that, or at least we're not aware of any self-destructing ebook readers out there. However, failure to update your 5th generation or older Kindle device will result in the...Read more...

It could be said that ARM chips are what help make the world go ‘round these days, at least in terms of mobile and embedded applications. And ARM is back at it again with with a next generation of its Cortex-R Series real-time processor architecture. The British multinational semiconductor IP company has unveiled the new Cortex-R8, which offers a number of significant improvements over its Cortex-R7 predecessor (released in 2011). The new architecture is targeted at extremely low latency processing, much like the previous gen, but with a number of key enhancements and features for critical real-time...Read more...

Users of the Chrome beta for Android are in for a bit of a treat, as the latest version has added support for "Physical Web" beacons. Don't worry if you've never heard of these, because most haven't. Google did talk about it a bit last summer, and it seems like a feature that could be incredibly useful at times. The logic behind the name of "Physical Web" is that data is distributed locally; not over the Internet. The goal is to relay information to those nearby that would prove useful. Say, for example, you're in a restaurant, and as you wait for a seat, a beacon beams the menu to your phone so...Read more...

T-Mobile might be the third largest carrier in the US, but looking at things through different angles can make it #1. We can see this with the help of the latest results out of OpenSignal, a firm that collects data through real users (who opt-in to use its mobile app). For overall coverage, Verizon reigns supreme. It also does well in overall download speeds, tying with T-Mobile. Beyond that, T-Mobile shows the best latency and download speeds over 3G, which gives it enough of an edge to beat out Verizon, and AT&T and Sprint, for that matter. In LTE speeds, T-Mobile also topped Verizon with...Read more...